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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/A_Hippocampus on 2026-05-24 13:17:36+00:00.

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I’m typing this from my phone in my bedroom with the door locked. I’ve been shaking badly and not just from the cold. I don't care if you think I’m having a psychotic episode. I just need someone, absolutely anyone, to tell me how to survive the night. If I fall asleep, I am dead. If I leave, I will be found. Please, if anyone knows anything about occult pacts, blood covenants, or how to banish something that used to be a person, comment. Quickly. I am running out of time.

Most of you reading this, if anyone even bothers to, didn't know me well. I’ve lived my entire life as a ghost, drifting through retail jobs, rarely leaving the confines of this cramped apartment. I am someone you wouldn’t recognize even if I stood right in front of you. I don’t have any remaining family, and I never had a group of friends to grab drinks with on weekends.

All I had was Mark. That was it. Just Mark.

We met six years ago at the Copperhead Brewery downtown. I was hiding out in the darkest booth at the back of the bar, nursing a beer I couldn’t really afford. I felt totally invisible until he just walked up and slid into the seat right across from me. He asked what I was drinking, ordered the same, and we ended up talking for hours like we’d been friends since childhood. We were inseparable after that. In a world as fucked up as this one, he was the only person who actually took a second to look at me and decide I was worth a damn.

We used to get drunk at that same corner booth almost every night and talk about the big stuff. The universe. God. What happens after death. In our stupor, we thought our late-night debates were pure genius; Plato and Aristotle reincarnated as two intoxicated idiots. One night, after a few too many pints, we made a pact. We both laughed it off at the time, completely joking around. We shook on it and agreed that whoever died first had to find a way to come back and tell the other guy the truth about the afterlife. Just so we'd know it wasn't some fake mind-trick, we created a secret code word. Of course, we dedicated it to the place that brought us together: Copperhead.

It was all supposed to be a joke. A mindless, drunken promise made by two guys who thought they had fifty years left to live, but that's the joke of the universe I guess. It was three weeks ago when a semi-truck drifted over the center line on Route 9 and struck Mark's car head on. Mark was killed instantly. It brings me peace that he felt no pain. He would always tell me that one of his biggest fears was a prolonged death. “Just rip the bandage off” he would say during our conversations. “If I’m going to die, might as well die quickly.”

Because I wasn't family, I was barely acknowledged at the funeral. I sat in the furthest row from Mark, watching his relatives weep over a closed casket. They didn't know him. Not like I did. After his death, I was back to being my invisible self, consumed by a grief that felt like a physical weight squeezing the air out of my lungs and tears from my eyes. Each day, I religiously watched my phone and waited for the 4:00 P.M. “Copperhead tonight?” text that I knew would never come. Three days had passed since the funeral when I finally collapsed into the deepest sleep I had ever had. That was the first night he came.

I had a dream unlike any ordinary dream I had in the past. The atmosphere was thick, heavy, and suffocating, all of the tells of a night terror. I was completely paralyzed in my own bed, simply staring at the bedroom door. The air quickly grew freezing cold. The stench of fresh asphalt and gasoline overpowered the faintest taste of blood in my mouth. I tried to wake myself up, but then my bedroom door slowly creaked open and my eyes couldn't help but stare.

The door eventually revealed a silhouette of a short, yet burly, man. I wasn’t able to make out any of his features until he took his first steps into my room. It was Mark. Mark was standing in my fucking room. His body was violently broken in ways that were just incomprehensible. His right shoulder was completely dislocated and shoved up his neck, ignoring his collarbone. His horrifying jaw hung open at an unnatural, shattered angle, impossible to close. Pieces of glass were embedded all throughout his skin, glinting in the faint moonlight like stars on a clear night. Most terrifyingly, there was a steady stream of dark red blood that poured from a massive gash in his scalp, matting his hair and soaking through his torn white shirt.

He dragged himself across my floor, struggling to walk with each step. His broken bones clicked against other bones and tendons with every movement he made. His legs bent at unnatural angles, causing his walk to resemble that of a reptile. He arrived at my bed before I had a chance to breathe. With the sound of his spine separating vertebrae by vertebrae, he leaned over my bed, his mangled face just inches from mine.

I tried my best to scream, to wake up, but I was trapped in my own body. His jaw twitched, his teeth clicked together, and he forced out a single, wet whisper:

"Copperhead."

The moment he said the word, I regained control of my body and he vanished. I woke up drenched in sweat, desperately telling myself it was just a cruel trick played by my mourning brain.  My heart fought valiantly to be contained within my rib-cage as I worked up the courage to turn on all of the lights in my apartment. I was shook for hours. I spent the entire day walking around my apartment, tracking the sun as it traveled across the floor. I was terrified of when the night would return. Unfortunately, that moment inevitably came. While I tried my best to remain awake for as long as possible, it was my body’s desire for rest that was the only thing that convinced me to return to my bed that night.

That night, the exact same routine played out. The moment my consciousness slipped away, I was rudely awakened by the smell of gasoline and asphalt flooding my lungs. My arms and legs were completely immobilized, as Mark clumsily stepped through the threshold. The sounds of sickening snaps of his dislocated bones echoed in the quiet room before he leaned in, his remaining dead, milky eye staring into mine, and delivered the word. “Copperhead.” Mark's voice was wet, as if gurgling blood.

By the fourth night, I was consuming enough caffeine pills and energy drinks that I am genuinely surprised that my heart didn't explode. I've kept every television and light in the apartment blaring, but after a while, it all just becomes a sinister white noise that lulls you into a thoughtless shell. The moment I would inevitably nod off, even for just three minutes on the kitchen tile, there he was.

By the sixth night, the horrors grew worse. Mark arrived and, this time, I could hear the wet squish of his internal organs shifting inside his crushed chest cavity. He reached out with a hand that was missing three fingers, the exposed bone of his knuckles scraping against my cheek, as he whispered the word into my ear.

Soon, the sleep deprivation began to rot my waking mind. I’d hear the distinct sound of wet, dragging footsteps in the hallway outside my door at 2:00 A.M. I’d look at the carpet, and for a split second, I’d see a dark, damp trail of fluids leading toward my bedroom, only for it to vanish when I blinked.

I was losing my mind. My eyes were bloodshot, sunken deep into dark, purplish hollows. My skin turned a sickly, translucent gray. When I forced myself to eat, I couldn’t taste anything. I was trapped in a living hell. I began to hate Mark. I began to curse the night we met. I thought the exhaustion would kill me before the madness did, knowing that I was suffering the very fate Mark feared. But then came last night. That was when the nightmare stopped being a dream.

It happened around midnight. I was in the bathroom splashing cold water onto my face, desperate to wash away the hallucinations that had been dancing in the corners of my eyes all evening. I had the towel to my face when I heard a heavy, metallic click, followed by the groan of my front door swinging open. My tired heart decided to stop, rather than race. The air in the apartment instantly plummeted, turning my invisible breath into thick white clouds. The cold was followed closely by that terrible smell. It was different than before, however. It had evolved from a faint memory of gasoline and asphalt, to the overwhelming stench of stagnant swamp water, damp earth, and rotting flesh. As soon as the scent reached my nostrils, it took all of my focus to keep my dinner down. I forced my trembling legs to cautiously walk out of the bathroom into the hallway.

"Hello?" I choked out, my voice cracking. "Is someone there?"

I stood perfectly still, as if expecting someone to respond. I held my breath, but no one ever replied. I crept into the living room and noticed the front door was left completely open. In what I can only explain as an outburst of excited delirium, a giddy relief washed over me. I just forgot to lock it, I told myself with a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat. The wind blew it open. You're just crazy. You're just tired.

I calmly stepped forward, confidently slammed the door shut, and locked the deadbolt. The sound of the door hitting its frame echoed like a gunshot in the middle of the night throughout my apartment complex. I let out a deep sigh and rested my forehead against the cool wood, ...

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